Eighth House
The eighth house follows the seventh and precedes the ninth. It is succedent, one of the four houses that follow directly after an angle, in the classification set out at House Division. In the whole-sign aspect scheme it is in aspect to the second, fourth, fifth, sixth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth houses, and in aversion, sharing no aspect, with the first, third, seventh and ninth.
Two names for the same thing
The Hellenistic Greek name recorded for this place is Beginning of Death, archē thanatou 1 bk. III ch. 10.
Tradition
Held byDorotheus of Sidon, Carmen Astrologicum: The ʿUmar al-Tabarī Translation bk. I, c. 75 CE
Dorotheus, writing in a text that reached its surviving form through a wholly different transmission, an Arabic rendering of a Middle Persian rendering of the lost Greek original, calls the same place the sign of death, and groups it with the second and third among those “not recognized as good” in his ranking of the twelve by strength 2 bk. I.
Two lines of the tradition, reaching the modern reader by entirely separate routes, give the eighth place the identical subject under two names that translate to the same thing; unlike several of its neighbours, the eighth is a place where the named sources agree about what it governs.
What Lilly assigns it
Tradition
Held byWilliam Lilly, Christian Astrology bk. I, London, London, 1647
Lilly assigns the eighth house the estate of the dead and death itself, its manner and quality; wills, legacies and testaments; a wife’s dower and a maiden’s portion, and how readily either is obtained; in a duel, the adversary’s second, and in a lawsuit, the defendant’s own friends; the kind of death a person will suffer; and who inherits from the deceased. He rules by it the reproductive organs, gives its colours as green and black, names Scorpio as its consignificator sign, and calls it succedent and feminine 3 bk. I.
Death, inheritance and what is owed to the dead remain the constant across the whole span from the Hellenistic names to Lilly’s print manual.
References
- Claudius Ptolemy, trans. F. E. Robbins. Tetrabiblos. Loeb Classical Library 435. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1940 (composed c. 150 CE). bk. III ch. 10. find a copy (catalogue search) recordprimary source
The standard English reference and the chapter-numbering scheme this site adopts and names. Non-Robbins reprints number the chapters differently, so every locus here is given as Robbins numbering.
- Dorotheus of Sidon, trans. Benjamin N. Dykes. Carmen Astrologicum: The ʿUmar al-Tabarī Translation: Cazimi Press, 2019 (composed c. 75 CE). bk. I. ISBN 9781934586501 recordprimary source
Second updated edition. A practitioner translation, cited alongside rather than instead of Pingree's 1976 Teubner critical edition. The Greek original is lost; the text survives through a Middle Persian intermediary into Arabic, which is itself part of why the Dorothean material needs careful reading.
- William Lilly. Christian Astrology. London, 1647 (composed 1647). bk. I. https://archive.org/details/b30338724 recordprimary source
Second edition 1659. Where a figure differs between the two printings this site says which printing it is quoting.